Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. For the past fifty two years,
Speaker 1: teacher and diversity trainer Jane Elliott has been stirring up
Speaker 1: trouble on the subject of racism. It can still be
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to squirm in your seat, stare at your shoes,
Speaker 1: uncomfortable when she subjects someone to the very same exercise
Speaker 1: she first unleashed on third graders more than half a
Speaker 1: century ago, but designed to expose racist thinking. Something her
Speaker 1: method can get downright mean. But again, the subject is racism,
Speaker 1: it should be troubling. Elliott came to prominence when, the
Speaker 1: day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 1: In she, herself a white woman, took her classroom of
Speaker 1: all white third graders in Riceville, Iowa, and decided to
Speaker 1: teach them what it was like to face discrimination. She
Speaker 1: separated the kids into two groups, those with brown eyes
Speaker 1: and those with blue and proceeded to proclaim the brown
Speaker 1: eyes the superior group. She allowed the group extra privileges,
Speaker 1: more time at recess seats at the front of the room.
Speaker 1: They were told they were cleaner, smarter, more talented, how
Speaker 1: the children reacted to this newfound pecking order was startling.
Speaker 1: The brown eyed group immediately began to wield their dominance.
Speaker 1: The blue eyes almost immediately slipped into the role of subordinates.
Speaker 1: Anger flared disputes popped up after switching roles a few
Speaker 1: days later, which gave both sides of the classroom a
Speaker 1: taste of being in the lesser group. The exercise ended.
Speaker 1: Many parents complained after reading about what had happened in
Speaker 1: Elliott's classroom through student essays printed in the local paper.
Speaker 1: A month or so later, Johnny Carson invited Elliott to
Speaker 1: appear on his late night talk show. She became a
Speaker 1: national story. Many praised her efforts at opening her students eyes,
Speaker 1: but not everybody. A two five stories Maisonian magazine reported
Speaker 1: hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliot's work appalled them.
Speaker 1: How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children?
Speaker 1: One said, Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior,
Speaker 1: but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it.
Speaker 1: It's cruel to white children and will cause them great
Speaker 1: psychological damage. Elliott spoke with us for the article that
Speaker 1: this episode is based on from her home in Iowa.
Speaker 1: She said, you think that's traumatizing, try living that way
Speaker 1: for a lifetime. Elliott taught for years before she decided
Speaker 1: to take her anti racism lesson out of the classroom
Speaker 1: and into corporate America. She's also led the exercise for
Speaker 1: the U. S Department of Education and other governmental groups.
Speaker 1: She's appeared before numerous church and school assemblies. She was
Speaker 1: on Oprah Winfrey's TV show several times. In June, she
Speaker 1: appeared on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. She often
Speaker 1: faces uncomfortable and sometimes angry reactions, but her goal, as
Speaker 1: it has been for the past fifty two years, is education.
Speaker 1: She says it's the best weapon against racism, but good
Speaker 1: education about racism and race is hard to find. Elliott
Speaker 1: said that's because the educators believed the same thing that
Speaker 1: they were taught, and they were taught the same thing
Speaker 1: that I was, which is that there are three or
Speaker 1: four different races, and you can tell what a man's
Speaker 1: intelligence is by the color of his skin or the
Speaker 1: shape of his head. You can't lead people out of
Speaker 1: ignorance if you're still teaching. The Columbus discovered America, and
Speaker 1: we came here to civilize these savages. We need to
Speaker 1: teach the three rs of rights, respect, and responsibility. If
Speaker 1: teachers would respect the rights of those students to learn
Speaker 1: the truth and be held responsible for seeing that they
Speaker 1: present them with the truth, we could kill racism in
Speaker 1: two generations. There's not a doubt in my mind that
Speaker 1: that could be done. Elliott, at eight seven years old,
Speaker 1: has seen America grapple with racism all her life. She's
Speaker 1: marked major mile posts in the struggle over the past
Speaker 1: fifty years or so, the Civil rights movement and the
Speaker 1: assassination of Dr King in the sixties. The race. It's
Speaker 1: in Miami's Liberty City in eight and in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: after Rodney King beating in the protests, in Ferguson, Missouri,
Speaker 1: in after the killing of Michael Brown, and in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: Maryland after that of Freddy Gray, and in Charleston, South
Speaker 1: Carolina that same year after a church massacre. There are
Speaker 1: many others, but the problem she has been relentlessly attacking,
Speaker 1: Elliott says, goes far beyond the occasional race based flora.
Speaker 1: For people of color in the United States, facing down
Speaker 1: racism is an everyday fight, every minute of every day
Speaker 1: Elliott said, it's only been going on with me for
Speaker 1: fifty two years. I know black women who have been
Speaker 1: doing this for eighty nine years, and their mothers did,
Speaker 1: and their grandmothers did, and their great grandmothers did, and
Speaker 1: their daughters and their granddaughters and their great granddaughters are
Speaker 1: going to have to do it unless we get off
Speaker 1: our polly unsaturated fatty acids and do something about this.
Speaker 1: I get paid to talk about it. They aren't even
Speaker 1: allowed to talk about out it. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: hurdles in educating people about racism in the United States,
Speaker 1: Elliott says, is that most everyone knows it exists and
Speaker 1: knows that it's harmful, but few are motivated to change it.
Speaker 1: She has stood in front of classes and asked who
Speaker 1: among the white people in the room would want to
Speaker 1: switch places with the black person. No one ever volunteers.
Speaker 1: She cautions that recognizing the problem is only the first step,
Speaker 1: but Elliott is nothing if not persistent. She says she'll
Speaker 1: continue to educate for the next fifty years. She'll push
Speaker 1: her mantra of one race. The science behind the simple
Speaker 1: words is clear. According to the National Human Genome Research Institute,
Speaker 1: your genome the body's blueprint that contains all of your
Speaker 1: DNA is nine percent the same as every human around you,
Speaker 1: And she says she will urge people to get out
Speaker 1: and vote this November and hope of electing leaders who
Speaker 1: will attack racism as she has head on m. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler
Speaker 1: clay Or. More on this and lots of other topics.
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